Temporal coherence in mirrorless optical parametric oscillators

Gustav Strömqvist (1) , Valdas Pasiskevicius (1) , Carlota Canalias (2, 1) , Pierre Aschieri (3) , Antonio Picozzi (4) , Carlos Montes (3)

1 KTH - KTH Royal Institute of Technology [Stockholm]
2 Department of Applied Physics
3 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée
4 ICB - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne

One of the unique features of mirrorless optical parametric oscillators based on counterpropagating three-wave interactions is the narrow spectral width of the wave generated in the backward direction. In this work, we in- vestigate experimentally and numerically the influence that a strong phase modulation in the pump has on the spectral bandwidths of the parametric waves and on the efficiency of the nonlinear interaction. The effects of group-velocity mismatch and group-velocity dispersion are elucidated. In particular, it is shown that the substan- tial increase in temporal coherence of the backward-generated wave can be obtained even for pumping with a temporally incoherent pump. A configuration of a mirrorless optical parametric oscillator is proposed where this gain in spectral coherence is maximized without a penalty in conversion efficiency by employing group-velocity matching of the pump and the forward-generated parametric wave.

Domaines: Optique / photonique; Optique [physics.optics]; Physique Numérique [physics.comp-ph]

Gustav Strömqvist, Valdas Pasiskevicius, Carlota Canalias, Pierre Aschieri, Antonio Picozzi, et al.. Temporal coherence in mirrorless optical parametric oscillators. Journal of the Optical Society of America B, 2012, 29 (6), pp.1194-1202. ⟨hal-00695946⟩